Tag Archives: family

While Louisiana reels or tries not to reel from tensions centering around Baton Rouge. There are families in Texas that do not yet feel the need to pivot mostly to our news stories. They are the families of the officers killed in the recent Dallas police ambush which preceded the one in Baton R0uge. The fallen officers killed have been identified as: Dallas Police Department Senior Corporal. Lorne Ahrens, age 48, who had been with the department since 2002; Dallas Police Department Officer Michael Krol, 40, who had been with the department since 2007; Dallas Police Department Seargent. Michael Smith, 55, a former U.S. Army Ranger who had served in the department since 1989; Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) Officer Brent Thompson, 43, a former U.S. Marine who had been serving in DART since 2009. Thompson was the first DART officer to be killed in the line of duty since the department was founded in 1989 and last in this mention Dallas Police Department Officer Patrick Zamarripa, 32, a former U.S. Navy sailor and Iraq War veteran who had been with the department since 2011.This event was without equal in carnage of this kind in the period since 9/11 as far as killings in the United States. On that fateful day in 2001 that we all can remember who were Americans and anything near adulthood 72 law enforcement officers died in the totality of horror that is lumped together as the September 11 attacks. But this attack by Micah Xavier Johnson surpasses the two 2009 shootings in Lakewood, Washington, and Oakland, California, where four officers each were killed as well as the recent killings perpetrated by Long in Baton Rouge.

The shootings in Dallas were also a sort of peak thus far in the attack of radially conscious black actors against a combination of the white people of this country and the policing authorities as a direct and declared target. In addition to their significance for race relations they of course have other claims to fame and infamy. Five officers in a community which has been honored for its excellent race and community relations were killed and nine other law enforcement officers as well as two civilians were injured when shot by a decorated ( although not at the higher levels) and experienced US military veteran whose life shows many of the tensions and stresses of life in America in his generation from his upbringing in Mesquite Texas, to his birth in Missisisippi. Most of the victims were shot during the protests, where they distinguished themselves by maintaining an unthreatening demeanor and presentation of a policing force. At least one Officer was killed during a shootout that developed after the killer launched his attack.The dead comprised four Dallas Police Department (DPD) officers and one Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) officer. Four of the injured officers were from DPD, three were from DART, and two were from El Centro College. Seven of the injured officers were treated at Parkland Memorial Hospital, famous for recieing the fallen President Kennedy. Two officers underwent surgery. One civilian was shot in the back of the leg, breaking her tibia.

Unlike Baton Rouge, no Black Officers were killed in the attack and the shooter was part of the city and community in which he did the killing. I reacted to that deadly attack on police with a post referenced here. I will not spend very much space or very many words revisiting that attack in this post. There has been significant research into the background of the Dallas Cop Killer Micah Johnson who also had other names. The deceased and almost-certainly-correct-and-yet-never-to- be-tried-because-he-is-dead shooting suspect, Micah Johnson, had no criminal history. In terms of understanding what happened in Dallas there are different levels of understanding.

Micah Xavier Johnson had a number of aliases and one was of the Anglo type and the other was Islamic or at least Arabic with Islamic resonance. He visited assertive and strident political causes online and investigators found that he liked several websites dedicated to Black Lives Matter and the New Black Panthers. But he was also involved with groups that are seen as going over the line of respectable discourse in this country — the Nation of Islam and the Black Riders Liberation Party, two groups the Southern Poverty Law Center considers hate groups. The Nation of Islam stands out as the only one with a strong Islamic connection but there is more evidence of his interest in Islam.

There is no shortage of racial tension in the United States nor has there been in my lifetime and there is no single image, event or idea which epitomizes race relations here. There is no single person who embodies the experience of all or even most white people or black people in the country. There is no single position on a gauge which really accounts for how good or bad race relations are, that is the truth. But truth, as I have cited John Denver’s song for saying many times, — is hard to come by. The relations between the races in America have a complex reality and a complicated history. Before even getting to the many legal, economic, procedural, and religious questions that are pertinent to this post there is also the question of language and terminology. The first image in this article is a montage of people including Steph Curry, Mariah Carey, Jeremiah Wright, Soledad O’Brien, Vanessa Williams and Corey Booker who currently identify as Black. That is a legal, political and cultural decision. In the State of Louisiana where this post centers its attention people like them — who look like them and perhaps more than that have not been considered Black. This division into Black and white was accomplished in large part getting people like this to accept the designation of African-American. But the same processes and struggles had been ongoing long before that particular drama of terminology… Polarizing the country into Black and White even occurs to some real degree in a country of white and non- white. But there has been a middle ground approach which in our history also fostered greater sensitivity to 0ther differences within a responsible context. This post will get into that history a bit below. I have proposed addressing that set of realities which is represented in this discussion in my modelconstitutions which take up many posts and pages and in my writing about them in posts such as this and this. The current crisis is nothing compared to what may be coming down the road if we do not address our situation well.

The place where I am writing is a place with very specific racial history which is very significant in the United States of America. Every other place may have a thing which they may have done with racial overtones that falls across the line of history into the realm of legends where history joins folklore once again. But South Louisiana has many claims to fame in racial history. Perhaps if a few are listed they will add to the discussion of racial identity and relationships in America

The Battle of New Orleans is one of those parts of American history which was an enormously important event which has been minimized by various group over the years for political reasons. Many of these varied minimizers would hate and despise each other more than anyone involved in that important battle and some in fact have hated and despised each other — but nonetheless it has been a very important event which could not be accepted by many as decisive in American history and occurring as it did. One of the reasons that the battle of New Orleans was not given the fair share of credit it deserves in the age of Jim Crow segregation was because of race relations and racial identities among those in the flotilla of Jean Lafitte. Today there is little incentive to resurrect the sources buried then because Blacks were not equal in the complex reality of the period but they had vastly more opportunities and nearly equal positions than at many other times and places. In addition the society as a whole had both better (not well known) and worse (very well known) positions for African Americans of various identities including but not limited to the free negroes. Mulattoes, Quadroons, Octaroons and others of mixed race could be slave or free but they were not negroes. Sometimes the differences were large and sometimes they were slight.

Acadians who increasingly are called Cajuns have a white identity which is careful and as nuanced as whatever the society they are in may allow but they are a white ethnic group which has attachments to non-white groups that included their involvement with Jean Lafitte. the arguably very small act of setting up a relationship with Jean Lafitte and the Baratarian Association specifically to provide for the defense of their interests in the region and of their own lives and liberties from the depredations of the British. The person who would have been most in charge of this activity would have been Gils Robin. The memories of this period persist across Acadiana.

There is a Jean Louis Robin Canal and a Jean Louis Robin Lake to this day in South Eastern Louisiana. In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina journalist Ken Wells did a book published in 2008 about the family still building their own boats and navigating the waters of that region. Today they are only partly Cajun culturally and genealogically and have become part of another cultural fabric beside the homes of their Cajun ancestors. But in his book they remember the ties between the outlying Cajuns of that region the pirates and privateers of the Barataria Association. Folkloristically, the story would be more or less that the brothers Gils, Martin and Jean Robin would have moved to the region shortly after the Acadians had settled in the Lafourche region relatively nearby. Their small community would have ties to Attakakpas and Oppelousas Prairies of Louisiana in the West as well as with Lafourche. Martin Robin who was a godfather to one of the Lafitte children was the grandchild of one of these brothers. Jean Lafitte also had a number of titles he sometimes used that are capable of being given Cajun interpretation unique to it Helllenic Centre Ouest Languedoc vernacular. But the words have other possible explanations. In addition to the role Lafitte played in the Battle of New Orleans which was crucial in terms of artillery and supply and guides to the waters of the area Cajun units also fought in the area. Future Governor Henry Schuyler Thibodaux was a Lieutenant who saw action there. In addition Cajun or Acadian units served in several parts of the encounter. The service record was perhaps mixed in that battle but while some Acadians may have been farmed out to the other units and deployed some real expertise in throwing up defenses along the wetlands it does seem to be likely that the plurality of Acadians served on the ill-fated West Bank line under David Morgan. Morgan had put his troops in a more or less indefensible position to support Patterson, the artillerist not from Lafitte’s group. The bad position was exacerbated by the Kentucky riflemen in the unit who were sick exhausted and without Lafitte and others from Louisiana would have been unarmed for all practical purposes. At the moment of the attack all witness blamed the break in the line on the lack of courage not of the Cajuns but the troops from Kentucky. However, a court of inquiry found them also without fault because the position was so ill conceived and because the overall glory of the event was enough to overshadow the failures. Nonetheless men very likely to biased in favor of the Kentuckians over the men from South Louisiana thought they broke first. So the ties between my own ethnic community and the Creoles of color are both deep and important ties.

The most fierce fighters on the American side in the battle of New Orleans may well have been the Free Blacks. I did write earlier that no North American Colored officers existed before the Confederates of the Louisiana Native Guard. However, anyone who knows the battle well will remember Major Savary and Lieutenant Listeau were officers of color who fought in the battle. However, it seems very likely that their commissions like many titles of the era were carried over from other service. They held commissions as Spanish troops in Santo Domingo and the US recognized those commissions. This was intended to be temporary. Dominique Youx the Lafitte artillerist who played the most significant role of direct fighting by any Baratarian is of uncertain (certainly not Cajun) ancestry and became a respectable citizen of Louisiana when others went to galveston for the chance to continue a disreputable way of life. He likely had some colored ranking people in his unit but they were not formally commissioned, that leaves Listeau and Savary as exceptions to my statement about the Louisiana Native Guard. The Spanish had a few knowingly and officially commissioned colored officers in the Caribbean but not in their North American forces. Nonetheless, the victory at New Orleans was the greatest in American history at that time by many measures and Cajuns were there. So also were many creoles of color not all of whom considered themselves black or were considered such.

President Barack Hussein Obama has explicitly condemned the supposed absurdity of words and ideas such as “Octaroon”. He has been quick to make every African American Black in his ordinary speeches and has few real options given his ideology. He has presided over the dismantling of the Confederate Heritage preserved in monuments across much of the South. He has added to the impossibility of seriously examining the Confederate legacy as regards race relations. All those things listed above I believe to be demonstrable parts of his presidential legacy. But the truth is that the lack of understanding and discussion of the racial realities — realities we may not understand but which we nonetheless use to guide every day decisions that affect millions — has been badly inhibited for a long time.

I think that the constitutional realities were less than ideal for Micah Xavier Johnson, that does not excuse him for avenging Philando Castille and Alton Sterling as he did. But he was a man who had a gift for killing and attacking and for forming passionately held political convictions. A child of divorce and a marginal student he found a way to honor and decency in the US military. But he came home an alienated and violent man in an individualistic and dishonest society. Alienation underlies the violence,rage, unreasoning rhetoric and chaos coming from much of the Black community today. Alienation affects many others in our country and I think in part for constitutional reasons. That includes alienated white southerners and many cops.

But the Cajun people with whom I most identify have suffered enormous alienation in this country. For Cajuns it was often the case that there was a sense of facing three unpalatable realities at the same time. It was a cultural shift from a time when French heritage and American citizenship had enjoyed a more promising and positive relationship than they were coming to have in the years between 1865 and 1943. The portraits of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI had hung in honor in the halls of the Congress in Philadelphia before the Capital was moved to Washington and the District of Columbia. The Louisiana Purchase was both a friendly act and one which established a very definite equality between Citizens of France in Napoleonic Imperial Louisiana and those of the current United States of America. The result was a new country which was in a real sense a merger of two societies. This unity had been imperfectly but impressively sealed in the Battle of New Orleans. While other states, like Missouri would find themselves under the British common law after entering the Union, Louisiana itself at least would remain under the State’s new version of the French Civil Code. In 1847 the first laws describing language in schools were passed and the assurance was made of right to English only, French only and bilingual education. The Acadian Governor Mouton had from the Cajun point of view presided over the zenith of antebellum life in Louisiana before the forces of chaos and destruction which led to the Civil War were pouring across the region and were contested by his son Alfred Mouton. That same Alfred Mouton was killed in that war and so it was to that same golden age which Margaret Mitchell commemorated in Gone With the Wind was in fact a golden age in memory for many Cajuns as well. The horrors that followed were no less horrible for them than for other Southerners in fact they may have been worse years to come on average but the complexities of the period which followed were not going to be simply defined. Postbellum America was an increasingly alienating and hostile place for Acadians to live out their lives and destiny as Acadians or Cajuns.

But one may well argue that Black people are far more alienated and that certainly the Confederate monuments help to alienate them and cannot possibly point to anything that Black or other African American people would relate to in a way that might point to a path forward. A path rooted in Christian experience primarily, in the leadership of whites but in hope for full realization of African American potential. Probabaly most people who feel that way would still feel that way after reading this post but there are other arguments to be made from the facts. There is no way to avoid writing that despite all that has been written by very many competent people about the issues related to race in these decades I find that there are many large areas of important experience that are not duly explained.

While the Code Noir of 1685 was not the law in effect in Louisiana in 1860 it was still the strongest single source of the legal spirit behind the Louisiana Civil Code and the customs and practices of the State. That law stated in its final article the following: Article LIX. We grant to freed slaves the same rights, privileges and immunities that are enjoyed by freeborn persons. We desire that they are deserving of this acquired freedom, and that this freedom gives them, as much for their person as for their property, the same happiness that natural liberty has on our other subjects.

An ocean of ink has been expended to show that by no means did any spirit of this law exist in the South. That has been done by those of a more Southron party and disposition and those more inclined to extol the benevolence of the wonderful Union reconstruction. There is evidence that much of that ink does not deal adequately with the facts as they existed in Louisiana. We see that in the period of time immediately following Louisiana’s secession, Governor Thomas Overton Moore issued pleas for troops on April 17 and April 21, 1861. There is a great deal to be learned from the incidents related to the creation and the rest of the story of the Louisiana Native Guard. So that story is outlined here in brief. It remains in testimony to realities of that era.
In response to the governor’s request, a committee of ten prominent New Orleans free people of color who included people across the color spectrum which in their society was not the only factor for determining a family or an individual’s rank but was the single most important purely social factor in a complex social system. The certified were a group of people less than one eighth Negroes who were proven to be committed to the social order of antebellum Louisiana and these enjoyed a special relationship with the Creole and Cajun elite. These people were being woven into the fabric of the merged culture of Louisiana after Statehood until the War. Below them were the Octoroons, the Quadroons, the Mulattoes and the true free blacks. Writers today will tend to call all of these people free blacks and they have their reasons for doing so but that is not how they saw themselves. This complex and racially conscious and stratified community was represented in this Committee of Ten who called a meeting at the Catholic Institute on the 22d of April. About two thousand people attended the meeting where muster lists were opened, with about 1,500 free men of color signed up. The anglo Southron Governor Moore included in all the proper and ordinary channels these applications and included these men as part of the state’s militia. The Louisiana Native Guard is so named because they were natives who were not quite citizens but they were accepted as armed patriots in the Confederate cause. It bears adding that while this text asserts that Acadians were largely very free under the laws of 1685 many French people were not. Thus in the way of thinking of many in Louisiana including most Cajuns these freed people had preserved the kind of liberty and status a 1685 Frenchman would have who did not enjoy the freedom of a Coutume, a religious order, a knightly order, a chartered city or a privileged family. That was still a real level of freedom. Ancient Acadian rights, the Louisiana Purchase and the US Constitution allowed the Cajuns more freedoms to which the freedmen were not a party. Likewise the “Kentucks” as Cajuns sometimes called the newcomers asserted the rights of Scotsmen, Englishmen and the rights of the Louisiana Purchase and the US Constitution. Those were rights to which these people were not a party but did not preclude them from preserving the rights of French Colonial Natives which were transferred as an unspecified adjunct to the rights of Citizens under the Purchase. So the new militia regiment of colored Natives was formed during May 1861. The men were mostly but not all from the Francophone community, some members of the colored Confederate regiment came from wealthy prominent gens libres de coleurs families. they filled the majority of NCO posts initially but the majority of the men held the rank of private soldiers and were in civilian life clerks, artisans, and skilled laborers. at the end of that fateful May on the 29th in 1861, Governor Moore appointed three white officers as commanders of the regiment, and company commanders were appointed from among the larger group of elected non-commissioned officers. This volunteer militia unit was the first of any in North American history to knowingly have African-American officer. That is not because there had not been colored soldiers under the United States, Britain, Spain and France. It was Louisiana as she rose up for Dixie that chose to take this step.Though ten per cent of the members of this Confederate unit would later join the Union Army’s First Louisiana Native Guard, the two are regarded by most as separate military units. It is one of the tragedies of the falling and failing South that these men never fired a shot in anger as Confederates against the Yankee invader. While there may be many other stories for which their fate is a better one for a Cajun view of what the South it was supposed to be it was a sign of bad times to come. It indicates something about the customs, commerce and status of person in Louisiana that these Native Guards were traditional American militia volunteers, and as such supplied their own arms and uniforms. One here is reminded of another article of the Code Noir, as follows: Article XV. We forbid slaves from carrying any offensive weapons or large sticks, at the risk of being whipped and having the weapons confiscated. The weapons shall then belong to he who confiscated them. The sole exception shall be made for those who have been sent by their masters to hunt and who are carrying either a letter from their masters or his known mark.

There is every reason to believe that the even as the Code lived on in more current laws regarding arms restrictions strictly enforced against slaves were not applied to these men in their daily lives before the war.These were displayed in a grand review of troops in New Orleans on November 23, 1861, and again on January 8, 1862. The terribly wasted troops offered their services to escort Union prisoners taken prisoner by the Confederate forces at the First Battle of Bull Run. One could imagine that this could have been done with white troops as well and with international observers it might have been a means of showing the possibility of Confederate policy working out a secure future the abolitionist powers they sought to ally with as they marched through New Orleans.But this would have required the kind of social daring the COnfederacy would usually lack.

Confederate General David Twiggs failed to accept the unit’s offer, but thanked them for the “promptness with which they answered the call. That was a response that reflected the way such transactions occurred in the military. The Louisiana State Legislature had begun to change the society into something new when they passed a law in January 1862 reorganizing the militia into only “…free white males capable of bearing arms… ”. The Native Guards regiment was effectively disbanded by this law on February 15, 1862. Despite the change in racial ideology already starting Governor Moore used his executive powers to reinstate the Native Guards to oppose the U.S. Naval invasion. But when the regular Confederate forces under Major General Mansfield Lovell abandoned New Orleans the whole system was plunged, into disarray. Cajuns served in the regular Confederate Forces and had militia units advancing to defend the city as well as the unauthorized units that have always been part of the culture who hoped to join in the fight in their traditional guerilla manner. But none of these units did well when the Confederate forces withdrew and the militia units were left to fend for themselves. The Native Guards were subject to the same relative disgrace and so it was no great surprise that they were again, and in finality, ordered to disband by General John L. Lewis, 1862, as Federal ships arrived opposite the city. General Lewis of the Louisiana Militia as he sent word to their units deployed in useless positions disbanded these colored Confederates and cautioned them to hide their arms and uniforms before returning home. He also began the process requiring them to hide their COnfederate service, later ten percent of this unit would serve in the Union and be among the most distinguished colored troops. Some came to the irregular Cajun militia according to spoken tradition and assisted in the armed and highly secretive smuggling supplies to Confederate forces during the war. None of those ever received much recognition even though some did fire shots in anger at Union forces in these irregular units. The white creole Colonel Felix Labatut maintained the belief that colored troops could make a difference and was proven right by the Union service with distinction of his former officers Cailloux and Morrison in the cause of the Yankee invaders.

The moratorium of colored troops by the South certainly did not limit the deployment of colored troops by the union. Whatever the injustices and horrors of the slaveholding South may have been there were plenty of woes in the war and reconstruction that followed. From the Cajun point of view it was a bitter irony to lose possible GLC units and see that throughout the war and in the time of the period after end of hostilities in the Civil War was a time in which Cajun folklore reports that people believed that Yankee bureaucrats had motivated and armed a quarter of a million freed slaves and loosed them in strongly encouraged rage upon the Southland. This period followed the kinds of endless horrors described in books like Yankee Autumn in Acadiana and local institutions of my ancestors rolled over to face the new challenge. the Knights of the Invisible Empire of the Ku Klux Klan Also known with the same name given here but with the word White preceding all the others i.e. “White Knights…” also known as the Ku Klux Klan, the KKK and the Klan. The Klan share many motifs, traditions and operating procedures with the much older Ridelles and somewhat older Comites de Vigilance that existed among the Acadians. However, the Klan always had it own symbols too and those grew in importance and common symbols declined. The Cross-Lighting was never an Acadian symbol but perhaps went with the ideas of ethnic differentiation that are very Acadian. Knights of the White Camellia have been basically a special Louisiana version of the Ku Klux Klan. The name is a triple entendre it references the beautiful flowers of this area, the legendary kingdom of Arthur of the Round Table, and the Chivalric legacy left by French Catholic Christian Prince Camille de Polignac, a fine specimen of all that being white as well as being human can offer. Aside from a relatively long list of titles his ordinary name was Camille Armand Jules Marie, Prince de Polignac. He was a handsome, well educated, musical, mathematical, valiant and well traveled aristocrat who was a Confederate General during the Civil War. This Prince took command from the Acadian Confederate General Alfred Mouton after he died achieving the last major victory under the Confederate flag. Cajuns cannot be expected to say that right or wrong as life may be there is nothing to be admired in this Prince that is absent in a miserable ignorant Black field hand given a gun and a few weeks training. The Prince as a friend of Mouton embodied a sense of the lost potential of Acadiana to bring the South into a prominent place in the world. Christian institutions in the White Supremacist South did offer a flowering of African American potential and that flowering was largely vandalized by Southern factors but also by the union. Getting rid of Confederate heritage will not mend our woes. The roots of our struggles these days in my opinion are in various forms of alienation and a solution I could tolerate will start with telling the truth. Telling the truth many times in difficult ways will not solve the problems alone but it will be part of making a start at solving the problem.

Racial violence is not going to end tomorrow. Ending racial violence cannot be achieved in isolation form other challenges. I believe that we need radical change. But most radical change is bad. Getting the right radical change when it is needed is almost miraculous….

Black and Blue

The Civil Rights movement has shaped much of my life experience. I am fifty years old.

Liberty must evolve but not be abandoned.

I have posted about race in America before on more than one occasion. This is a link to one such post. But I will provide much of the text as needed here below. It is only a moderately distilled and limited boiling down of the original in the next few paragraphs. There is some effort to cover the news but there is more than that an effort to discuss how a great deal of America’s trouble seems to me, it is made real by near experience. That includes a sense that law enforcement and the judicial system are not exactly fixed in the role of protecting me from outside invasion — they have other roles as well. In following the economic collapse and in 2013 the official financial bankruptcy of Detroit, I remembered my ex-wife’s trips to Troy and our entertaining one of her supervisors when she came to Louisiana. I also remember my numerous trips to Michigan. I remember troubled neighborhoods and cities I have visited or lived in around the world. The school shootings remind me of my many experiences in schools. The soaring prison population reminds me of my many visits to and interactions with prisoners. One of the pastors of the church parish to which I belong and which I have regularly attended most of the last fifteen years has been to prison. Governors Edwards and Leche, Attorney General Jack Gremillion, Commissioners Brown and Roemer (Roemer was the father of Governor Roemer) all went to prison. One of the more successful members of my father’s law school class who was also one of his good friends went to prison. Several of my first cousins have gone to jail and a sizable number of my friends and classmates over the years have done time. Those numbers are not an abstraction for me. Lots of prisoners are black and a lot of others are in some way tied up with the results of our attempt at a misguided racial revolution. But misguided or not I do understand to some real degree the resentments and fears of many black people in the United States. I could empathize with black kids protesting over the Trayvon Martin shooting who were afraid of getting shot and the many whites and Asians not protesting who are afraid or disturbed by the racist Black masses of vengeful, ignorant people who harbor those calling for blood, making death threats and collecting money for bounties. This is a real tension and crisis but there are plenty of people who are not black who are concerned about run-ins with the police. When discussing the Trayvon Martin case the role of the President in responding to this crisis is very debatable but it surely can be said that it was not quickly resolved or defused.

We all have images of what leadership should look like which are not simple portrayals of reality.

Much of the current Black Lives Matter movement began with the shooting of Trayvon Martin. But actually it was less on the fateful night of February 26, 2012, when in Sanford, Florida of these United States, George Zimmerman delivered the bullet that killed Trayvon Martin that the protests really became intense. There were large protests that Trayvon’s killer was not charged. the masses of Blacks who erupted in the streets in those early days could make some claim to acting within reason. The original discussion focussed on the factual reality that after the largely untrained and officious Zimmerman shot Martin, who was young and unarmed, during an altercation which went on in the context of some kind of policing by Zimmerman and became physically intense between the two men and he was not charged with anything. The police who arrived were perhaps predisposed to see his side of things (so it could be argued) because they were responding to an earlier call from Zimmerman, the police had fresh and clear evidence as well because of the call and the fact that they arrived on the scene within two minutes of the shooting. Zimmerman was taken into custody, treated for head injuries, then questioned for five hours — a reasonably thorough response but still not as exhaustive as many. The police chief in charge of the investigation and arrest stated that Zimmerman was released for lack of evidence to refute Zimmerman’s claim of having acted in self-defense. In fact it did seem to be the case that under Florida’s Stand Your Ground statute, the police were prohibited by law from making an arrest in this case. But the optics were at least controversial and the protests might be just. They became intense and also really anti social in a new way when the issue became different. Right or wrong Zimmerman was arrested and charged for the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old African American high school student. The shooter was a significantly battered 28-year-old mixed race Hispanic man who was the neighborhood watch coordinator obviously doing his earnest best for the gated community and in this situation he killed Trayvon Martin living with relatives there and he was acquitted on July 13, 2013 and the protests began to deny the basic legitimacy of the justice system. This dislocation from a watchdog of the system was intensified when the protest spewed hatred at many parties when on February 24, 2015, the United States Department of Justice announced that “there was not enough evidence for a federal hate crime prosecution.” In that intense 2013 period there was another set of racial realities on my mind.

The posts I wrote about the Trayvon Martin case came at a time when I would rather have been paying tribute to a local and personal connection in an uncomplicated withone of that same year’s National Medal of Arts recipients: A man who has had his work put into successful television formats, who has a center named after him in my undergraduate alma mater, who has had his work and career recognized in many ways as this native of Louisiana and former Stanford University Stegner Fellow Ernest Gaines had that same year at eighty years old received an important award from the hands of President Barack Hussein Obama. Gaines was the only novelist on the National Medal of Arts list that year – he had already received the National Medal for the Humanities in 2000 and a similar honor from France and his work has been translated into Chinese and most large European languages. Poets and novelists have been awarded regularly the National Medal in both categories but I am not sure how many have received both awards. The language of the citation includes the following statement that Gaines is “recognized for his contributions as an author and teacher. Drawing deeply from his childhood in the rural South, his works have shed new light on the African-American experience and given voice to those who have endured injustice.”

Gaines was born more than 80 years ago on the River Lake Plantation near the small town of Oscar, in Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana. His ancestors had lived on the same plantation, River Lake, since slavery, remaining after emancipation to work the land as sharecroppers for five generations. Gaines and his family lived in the houses, much expanded, that had once served as slave quarters. His parents separated when he was eight; the strongest adult influence in his childhood was a great aunt, Augusteen Jefferson, crippled from birth, who crawled from kitchen to the family’s garden patch, growing and preparing food, and caring for him and for six of his brothers and sisters.

This became the setting and premise for many of his later works. He was the oldest of 12 children, raised by his aunt, who was crippled and had to crawl to get around the house. Gaines’ first years of school took place in the plantation church. When the children were not picking cotton in the fields, a visiting teacher came for five to six months of the year to provide basic education. Gaines then spent three years at St. Augustine School, a Catholic school for African Americans in New Roads, Louisiana. Pointe Coupée Parish, “Negro schooling” in the Parish did not progress beyond the eighth grade at that time.

At the age of fifteen, Gaines moved to California to join his mother and stepfather. He wrote his first novel was written at age 17, while babysitting his youngest brother, Michael. In 1956, Gaines published a short story, The Turtles, in a college magazine at San Francisco State (SFSU). He graduated in literature in 1957 from SFSU. After spending two years in the Army, he won the Stegner, a writing fellowship to Stanford. In most years since 1984, Gaines has spent the first half of each year in San Francisco and the second half at the university in Lafayette, Louisiana, where he has taught a workshop every autumn. But in 1996, Gaines did spend a full semester as a visiting professor at the University of Rennes in France where he taught the first Creative Writing class ever offered in the French University system Gaine remains deeply rooted and he and his wife a home on part of the River Lake Plantation where he grew up.[ He has also had the church he grew up with moved to his property.

He has been open about what he most treasures from those days, “I was raised by a lady that was crippled all her life but she did everything for me and she raised me,” he wrote. “She washed our clothes, cooked our food, she did everything for us. I don’t think I ever heard her complain a day in her life. She taught me responsibility towards my brother and sisters and the community.””

Ernest Gaines has at least two ways in which he has walked the path of a man of letters, a race man and a son of Louisiana. One part of his legacy is his work and life as a writer in residence, commercial success and regional celebrity. That must be taken into account in any assessment of his work and its impact on racial identity and politics. In that area he has been about the advance of his racial group as well as himself. When I was at enrolled the university where Gaines taught I was never enrolled in one of his classes, I did however attend lectures he gave, two of which were hosted by Dr. Patricia Rickels, now deceased, whom both of us knew very well and who was both in the English Department and head of the Honors Program to which I belonged. I spoke to her and students who knew him well about him much more often than I spoke to him and I read his books and bought several although at a time when I often got books signed I never had his books signed nor asked him for anything that I recall except once for his plans for classes in the coming semester which I recall he did not much appreciate. Gaines was a well dressed, disciplined man who was an intimidating physical specimen and more often in the national spotlight than anyone else in the Department when I was there. A strong academic, a strong son of Louisiana and a strong Black man – he was all those things.

The other side of Gaines is his writing itself. He preserved characters and scenes of White Creoles, Cajuns, Anglos and other people along with the African-American characters often described in ten different ways by use of the same “N word” now left out of some versions of Huckleberry Finn. The black people are humans with hopes, dreams, consciousness and aspiration. In A Gathering of Old Men, there is cowardice, backwardness, ignorance and folly portrayed with realism in the African-American Community. There is also courage, cleverness, hope and community as old men with shotguns having fired a shot face down the white supremacist Cajun establishment. In the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman there is failure and lack of achievement but also perseverance, a struggle for decency and a triumph of continuity. In A Lesson Before Dyingthere is a bit of heavy-handed moralizing, racial philosophizing, and more Black assertiveness than anywhere else but there is real pathos, tender regard for life and law and compromise as people of all colors find them. These are likely his most important works but not as revealing or upsetting to mainstream America as some of his lesser pieces. I have always liked reading Gaines and found him fulfilling to read as well. I once gave a copy of a Gaines novel, I believe it was Of Love and Dust to a friend and relative of mine, now deceased, who was a self-identified White Racist and asked the person to read it and get back to me. The response as best I recall it was, “That N***** can write. I really could hardly put the book down because it is story you feel. He knows and sees everything I do about N****** and he writes in a fully N*****ish fashion but he makes you think about what is right and how people should relate to each other because you know he is not afraid of the truth.” Gaines has a unique voice, I doubt that friend would have read an entire book by many other Black writers and maybe none at all who wrote about Blacks chiefly. Marcia Gaudet of the University of Louisiana’s Ernest Gaines center was quoted by a West Coast interviewer associate with the Stanford University where Gaines has long had ties and she said: “His literature is based on memory of the past, and it’s somewhat different from that of many African-American writers of the mid-20th century, who based their work on erasure of that past and moving their characters to Northern urban settings. Gaines was one of the first to go back and look at what the hardships were.” I pay tribute to Ernest Gaines here. But we all know that the arts alone will not save our society — they have an important part to play but it will no alone decide our fate.

The school shootings and other mass killings which Obama has loved to lump in together in his cries for gun control are not all racially motivated. The toll they take are also both real and significant. But so are all the acts of violence, disorder and depravity which destory our quality of Iife and do not involve a gun It is hard to see how the Rolling Stone cover of Dzokhar Tsarnaev helped to address the problem then or why it helps that nobody can discuss the fact that police and much more so unarmed white citizens have been driven by violent and disorderly blacks for so much our American heritage in a sustained campaign of ethnic cleansing.. However, it does remind us of how real our social problems are today. This is a society in crisis. I have a different perception of the Tsarnaev’s to add to the big picture of who they are which includes them being Muslim, Chechen, young, living in Boston and a dozen other realities that defined who these brothers were and who Dzokhar still is. But I want to think about their sense of ethnicity and identity and heritage in a society without very strong moorings in that regard. The alienation they felt led them to radical Islam and we have found a kindred and connected set of empathies in the recent cop-killers which is outlined in this post. Alienation and an inability to seriously understand diversity, federalism and sicuss one’s own background with those who surround one’s daily life — these are realities of American daily life.

If it is dangerous not to know one‘s self and it is dangerous not to know the world it is also more dangerous than some would think not to know the elements of one’s history as played by one’s neighbors. I am an Anglo-Acadian. I will not be discussing that heritage here as it relates to the Confederate heritage or American heritage but I have written of such things elsewhere . The word Christian was first used in Syria. It makes all Christians weak that there are few Christians left there and a priest was beheaded and it was scarcely reported here. We are living in a deadly blindness and are seeking a solution in trying to wipe out our own white supremacy for no particularly good reason – rather than trying to make it better. The Trayvon Martin movement is full of racist and violent blacks who want to control the country but not themselves. We are running out of time for a good plan.

Besides the Trayvon Martin protests, the bankruptcy of the City of Detroit and the collapse of al sense of a real legal system I have learned other things. I learned them over a life which has been punctuated by crises before the current cop killings. I have made proposals here which seem radcial and far-fetched and even if they do not seems such have a small chance of success. But they are serious proposals. Such proposal have in large part come about from the realization that it is a demonstrable fact that cowardice, corruption and cruelty are normal in governance and yet fatal as well and those who live in such modes of what might be called evil often applaud themselves most loudly for doing their best. I know hard times loom large and am aware of the fact that life is without apparent justice in countless cases, but I am trying to be part of creating a plan for a better future. My model constitutions have already spelled out the answers I would propose. What I am asserting here is mostly that the course we have been on will not work and will not be survivable if continued. Race and ethnicity must be faced and understood differently and that must happen soon. Doing it right will matter a lot.
I have decided to write most of everything I write from now on in preparation for the future which has stretched out so bleakly and horribly ahead of me for so long to be vastly worse than it has long been. I think that the time will be coming soon enough when I will sign off my web presence entirely but I will at least have written the things I will have wanted to say as the years of living hell extend into a limitless misery at least until death. I need to set a frame of reference I suppose, the person I respect the most among the living in the world today is me. That does not make me happy but it is the truth.

The truth of much policy and political philosophy is that it exists framed and living in a dialectic between that which must be done in a crisis and that which can be reasoned and properly debated in relative leisure during times not defined by a particularly urgent crisis. Lives like those of Gaines and others do map out a path of the minds that must engage the crises in which we live. History well understood makes it possible to be better informed about what is possible in a the new time in which we live. But we must have the basic facts and realities of society clear enough for our decisions to possible matter . The struggle of every society to formulate policy and then to put it into effect is one of the great themes of history although it may less often make its way into the titles of books or even their chapter headings. The truth is that most good historians telling most good and important histories have at least some interest in how the people of a given period discussed and intellectually prepared for a great historical crisis when it was incipient, developing and the then escalating. The activity during the time when the crisis is acute is not likely to produce original theoretical frameworks or innovative discussion which is really excellent. Instead those acting in the acute stage are often doing more than can be expected if they can reach for and apply the best theories and remedies which have been reasoned out and proposed in advance.

There is no shortage of information out and about which connects Islam to terror, here is such a post. The concern about how intense and intrinsic the basic disagreement with Islam may be is also something which has been discussed here and there online. The first link given has John Quincy Adams expressing the awareness of a basic animosity in Islam itself. The second post shows how Sarah Palin feels that Iran is outside the pale of diplomacy and how this relates to Islamic governance there.

One of my Facebook friends who also purchased the house I was living in before recently moving into my grandparents old house has long published a string of posts about Islam and its history with the West. I publish one of those posts here. It is unattributed beyond him but the facts are more or less right — with the exception that Crusade is a Christian word and Jihad is the Muslim equivalent. I reproduce this post from a man whose names start with the initials P. P. only knowing that it is largely correct and also expresses the feelings of a real American in my own sphere of contact and influence:

“ISLAMIC CRUSADES630 Muhammad conquers Mecca from his base in Medina.
632 Muhammad dies in Medina. Islam controls the Hijaz.636 Muslims conquest of Syria, and the surrounding lands, all Christian – including Palestine and Babylonia/Mesopotamia (Iraq).637 Muslim Crusaders conquer Iraq (some date it in 635 or 636).638 Muslim Crusaders conquer and annex Jerusalem, taking it from the Byzantines.638 – 650 Muslim Crusaders conquer Persia (Iran), except along Caspian Sea.639 – 642 Muslim Crusaders conquer Egypt.641 Muslim Crusaders control Syria and Palestine.643 – 707 Muslim Crusaders conquer North Africa.644 – 650 Muslim Crusaders conquer Cyprus, Tripoli in North Africa, and establish Islamic rule in Iran, Afghanistan, and Sindh.673 – 678 Arabs besiege Constantinople, capital of Byzantine Empire.691 Dome of the Rock is completed in Jerusalem, only six decades after Muhammad’s death.710 – 713 Muslim Crusaders conquer the lower Indus Valley.711 – 713 Muslim Crusaders conquer Spain and impose the kingdom of Andalus. The Muslim conquest moves into Europe.718 Conquest of Spain complete.732 Muslim invasion of France is stopped at the Battle of Poitiers / Battle of Tours. The Franks, under their leader Charles Martel (the grandfather of Charlemagne), defeat the Muslims and turn them back out of France.762 Foundation of Baghdad.785 Foundation of the Great Mosque of Cordova.789 Rise of Idrisid amirs (Muslim Crusaders) in Morocco; Christoforos, a Muslim who converted to Christianity, is executed.800 Autonomous Aghlabid dynasty (Muslim Crusaders) in Tunisia807 Caliph Harun al—Rashid orders the destruction of non-Muslim prayer houses & of the church of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem.
809 Aghlabids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Sardinia, Italy.813 Christians in Palestine are attacked; many flee the country.831 Muslim Crusaders capture Palermo, Italy; raids in Southern Italy.837 – 901 Aghlabids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Sicily, raid Corsica, Italy, France.869 – 883 Revolt of black slaves in Iraq.909 Rise of the Fatimid Caliphate in Tunisia; these Muslim Crusaders occupy Sicily, Sardinia.928 – 969 Byzantine military revival, they retake old territories, such as Cyprus (964) and Tarsus (969).937 The Church of the Resurrection (aka Church of Holy Sepulchre) is burned down by Muslims; more churches in Jerusalem are attacked.960 Conversion of Qarakhanid Turks to Islam.969 Fatimids (Muslim Crusaders) conquer Egypt and found Cairo.973 Palestine and southern Syria are again conquered by the Fatimids.1003 First persecutions by al—Hakim; the Church of St. Mark in Fustat, Egypt, is destroyed.1009 Destruction of the Church of the Resurrection by al—Hakim (see 937).1012 Beginning of al—Hakim’s oppressive decrees against Jews and Christians.1050 Creation of Almoravid (Muslim Crusaders) movement in Mauretania; Almoravids (aka Murabitun) are coalition of western Saharan Berbers; followers of Islam, focusing on the Qur’an, the Hadith, and Maliki law.1071 Battle of Manzikert, Seljuk Turks (Muslim Crusaders) defeat Byzantines and occupy much of Anatolia.1071 Turks (Muslim Crusaders) invade Palestine.1073 Conquest of Jerusalem by Turks (Muslim Crusaders).1075 Seljuks (Muslim Crusaders) capture Nicea (Iznik) and make it their capital in Anatolia.1076 Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) (see 1050) conquer western Ghana.1086 Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) (see 1050) send help to Andalus, Battle of Zallaca.1090 – 1091 Almoravids (Muslim Crusaders) occupy all of Andalus except Saragossa and Balearic Islands.

START OF WESTERN CRUSADES
Only after all of the Islamic aggressive invasions is when Western Christendom launches its first Crusades.

1094 Byzantine emperor Alexius Comnenus I asks western Christendom for help against Seljuk (Muslim Turks) invasions of his territory.1095 Pope Urban II preaches first Crusade; they capture Jerusalem in 1099.”

So now I conclude, what do we expect or want to happen if America does not face the facts of being eroded and interpreted into a position where it cannot respond. People like our President tend to believe that the Christianity among Blacks emerged as a sort of covert Islam. There is an element of truth in that. But all Christianity brings forth the culture of those who embrace the faith. In addition not all slaves came to the new world with Islamic roots and not all converts were slaves. We have much to do and honestly not much chance of of doing it. But our national future hangs in the balance.

I am sure that anyone who stumbles along here will be able to relate to being and feeling stressed. I have felt stressed dealing with this blog post today. Little and not so small computer errors and glitches have made life difficult as I have been engaged in this process.

But there are other reasons to be stressed that come from beyond our own lives. Many Americans of very different persuasions are disturbed by undercover video of doctors with Planned Parenthood discussing slaughtering late term fetuses babies and selling their part on demand. Disagreement over what it all means still goes on and the United States Senate failed to pass a bill to defund Planned Parenthood but clearly a lot of people are aware of these videos and concerned about what they mean about the state of our society. The reader here can get a view of these thoughts about the videos from a couple of links provided in this article.Planned Parenthood videos as discussed in the Daily Beast are here. Planned Parenthood Videos as discussed in the realm of the Christian Broadcasting Network are here.

We all know that family love and motherhood itself as a symbol and fact of welcoming and nurturing matter a great deal to the species and to society. All of the child sacrificing cults, infanticide regimes and abortion programs of human history have not changed the fact that people still know these are sacred and important matters that deserve care and consideration. We are right to worry about what parenthood and its plannning look like in the world and in our country.

Americans especially want things to not be too terrible we ant to believe that even that worst events are isolated and unrelated to other problems that we might have. In my writing on the recent theater shooting in Lafayette I took a view that this was not an act of random psychotic rage. You can see that post here. But it is hard to say what to make of all of this connected ness between tragedies.

There was a family in which two sisters were caught up in the shooting at the Grand Theater. One was an EMT responding to the incident when she saw her uninjured sister responding to other people covered in blood herself. The sister was a swim instructor who was trained in first aid and CPR and was helping out. You can see their story here. This family has become one of the local symbols for hope and courage in this area. Now the people who were at the heart of this part of the story have lost a third sibling, their brother took his own life yesterday after posting a cryptic assumed suicide not on Facebook. He also seemed angry at people who were attacking him in some way. I am leaving out the words and his name to protect some privacy but I have read the note.

The sign that is a feature of the city announcing showtimes is dark

Did a family that was a symbol of hope in stressful times come under attack from some amorphous source of stress in which real people who are our enemies might have a part? Did someone see a weakness in the brother and exploit it to bring down this symbol of resistance to the madness in the world?

It could happen without the brother knowing it. Nobody has the resources to investigate such subtleties. In America it is more or less a religion to mock much more obvious connections.

Stress propagates across society in complex ways. Is it possible to pretend that such stress is not always random. Many people seek to create stress and direct it and we all know that to be true. Conspiracies abound in the real world and not just in derided theories. The world is a dangerous and stressful place. My belief is that we can build a better future if we accept that nightmares do lurk around us than if we make it a false matter of faith that they do not.

Snakes and other issues complicate my life

Not everything that threatens us is evil and not everything that is evil directly threatens us. But we cannot afford to live in a world of our imagining. It would be nice if horrible things did not happen — but they do. We all have to decide how to deal with that reality day in and day out.

It is still a bit too early but “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!” This post mixes Christmas wishes with political discussions. That is surely not every one’s cup of tea. It is not always mine. But this blog combines such themes as they are combined in the passage of time in my life. This blog post is another one of those. In some ways it is perhaps an admission that neither one’s Christmassing nor one’s political life are all that they should be. I have been opposing much of Obama’s agenda in this blog and it certainly seems to have slipped back a few notches in the most recent election. This Christmas we as Americans can see that the world is in flux. We can hope to find our way forward through these holidays and the coming year without a great catastrophe but we can also know that there are crises afloat and afoot. Americans can find some solace in the stresses endured by the Holy Family on that first Christmas.

Mom with a Christmas tree in a previous year. Today she is scheduled to buy a tree.

I have not had an exemplary early Christmas and Advent and by some measures I am spoiling whatever moral or religious value it had be sharing it with you. This year I made some new ornaments to replace the missing ones in the old set my parents hang on the Jesse tree which is one of the only objects I still have from when I was married. I also put a few dollars into the Salvation Army kettles out and about, donated a few gifts to the toys programs at dollar stores and discount stores and posted a bit about Advent. I also went to religious services and participated in the Advent rituals around the wreath and Jesse tree at home.

The celebration of Christmas rates some substantial coverage on the White House’s official website. You can link to some of that coverage here. Wikipedia takes note of the White House Christmas tree tradition here. So, perhaps mixing up the elements of a Christmas blog post and an early presidential politics blog post is not such an odd idea after all.

Santa Claus is a powerful Christmas symbol in America today. Santa is certainly part of the landscape of my holiday.

Even for a conservative Catholic Christian like me it is getting closer to the time when one might say “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year”. I have used the word “Advent” in two blog posts (as well as the word Christmas in one of them). None of these posts have been as seasonal as some other I have posted here, here and here in previous years. It is also early be discussing the Presidential election of 2016 but I am doing that as well.

We all have images of what leadership should look like which are not simple portrayals of reality.

The reality of our political life is such that the Presidency is currently our biggest symbol and most important feature of our political life. What we have in our society is a dearth of many of the symbols of the cohesion and sharing of our social values with one another in the way that a great holiday can unite a nation and a society. So Christmas and its presidential aspects have a lot to do with our awareness of ourselves as a people and as a society that stands out as existing in some real way in the world. With ISIS executing American hostages almost continually, Russia flying more military sorties than it has since the Soviet Union was at the height of its Cold War assertiveness, the North Koreans mobilizing large cyber resources against us and real decay of US stature in Europe we are either likely to say what does our Christmas unity matter or we are likely to say that the unity we express is not the most important national concern. That is of course unless we are like millions of Americans who have very little concern for foreign policy. It is also true that some of us think of Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Mankind as a particularly relevant sentiment in times like these. The Angels greeting which came with that sentiment at the first Christmas was joined to their adoration, “Glory to God in the Highest!” Many Americans will be going to a variety of churches to honor God as they celebrate Christmas. Others will go to other places of worship to celebrate other holidays – including Chanukah which is a holiday Jesus’s family would have known. But Nativity scenes and even Christmas trees have become a set of lightning rods in the controversies about Christmas in public life. That discussion in return has become a big part of the discussion of religious expression in public life. What Presidential contenders will think about faith is increasingly a political issue that can be seen from many points of controversy.

Me in a shot by one of the proprietors on my phone as I walked into the Donors Dinner.

While the President plays the role he does in pardoning turkeys, lighting the National Christmas tree and seeking to embrace a holiday theme that resonates with the nation it is not impossible to think of the Presidency of the United States as part of our Christmas landscape. When we do there is a sense of the way that our society does and does not function which forms part of our vision of both the holidays and the politics of our nation. So who is likely to be the next President of the United States of America?

Christmas has long been a political and legal battlefield. The assault on Christmas has been part of the story but so has the defense of Christmas in public life. In the chart featured below which may still have some currency even though I believe it is based on data from before the 2014 Congressional elections we have two Republican contenders for the Presidency in 2016 who have about equal shares of prospective primary votes. One is Mike Huckabee who regardless of what he might say if asked about Christmas is a former Protestant Christian ordained minister who clearly has a likelihood wanting to keep the tradition of honoring the birth of Christ as a nation. The other is Rand Paul who, regardless of what he might say about Christmas is deeply committed to a libertarian point of view and politics. Such libertarians often find themselves in alliance with Atheists, some other religious groups and liberals of particular strip in undermining America’s traditional Christian holidays.

Early December 2014?

There is a lot of shaking out to do if these numbers mean any thing before any Republican can claim the nomination. But it does indicate perhaps the streams of thought that are shaping the country as regards finding a religious root for values expressed by America’s “right” in politics.

What then about the left? Where does the other side of American political energy come down on our connecting with the roots of Christianity. Unlike the possible GOP nominees, Hillary Clinton has tended to tower over her challengers for the 2016 Democratic nomination. Some people are saying that candidates like Elizabeth Warren are poised to show explosive growth but it would take a lot of growth to challenge Clinton in the primary.

Joe Lieberman who ran with Al Gore was not a Christian but a Jew who seemed to tolerate a good deal of public Christmas. Mitt Romney belonged to what most scholars consider to be a post-Christian religion but it is one that celebrates Christmas as an American holiday and the birth festival of Jesus Christ. Many presidents have been devout Christians: Washington, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, Woodrow Wilson, John Kennedy and half a dozen others are clearly men who in my opinion must be seen as Christians entirely. Whatever they did not achieve of the Christian ideal is not because they did not adhere to that faith and religion. Richard Nixon was reared as a Quaker and (though many American Quakers seem pretty much to be Christians) Quakers as a whole are not a Christian faith but one which grew up among Christians. It is hard to say what Nixon was when he was President. With men like Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and a few others it hard to say where they stood in terms of religious classification and identity.

So that brings me to Clinton. She is a favorite enemy of the Christian Right and other religious people in American politics and she may well deserve it. She has a background which is mostly verifiable: Clinton was reared a Methodist Protestant Christian, belonged to a Senate Prayer Group and has spoken at Prayer Breakfasts. Her profile may seem different to American atheists than to most other people. Here is an atheist site evaluating Clinton’s background and religious values. It is hard to know how she would deal with Christmas.

Early December 2014?Whenever this is it is Clinton’s race to lose at that moment.

Christmas and even religion are important but most religious people realize that religion connects to how they see all the world and does so in complicated ways. Real issues like how to evaluate science, how to evaluate ethical policies and how to make peace are informed by our religious background, point of view and activity. We see this with political issues from funding homeless shelters, to stem cell research to the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. But it goes beyond that.

I am a Christian and many of my blog posts are explicitly Christian. But my thoughts about science are in connection with my religious thought. So my scientific areas of discussion do seek or do have a harmony with my faith. Here,here and here are some examples. So my choices of how to use resources here and elsewhere are in connection to my religious values. I do accept and embrace pluralism in America. I see a kind of pluralism in America and the structure of the universe.

The truth about all of life is that it is a bit interactive and interactive and multifocal. That means that what we do affects what we see done and there are many other active people and forces creating the continuous drama that is the universe, playing out the great game — or whatever other metaphor might work for you. Increasingly one may disagree with what the meaning of different part of the drama or game may mean, how much they will matter or who should care. For example some scientist are feeling sure that they have just recently found the key to working out the meaning and structure of dark matter in the universe.

I am very interested in Astronomy but probably my use of space exploration money would place low priority on this research until a better theoretical framework was developed. That also has something to do with Christmas. So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Whether or not you are a Christian or an American I think the American experience of the holiday has something to say to us all. Chinese New Year and Chanukah are different indeed but they also represent a reaching for unity, meaning, celebration and often family. Not just a reaching for money, power and resources. A society with no spiritual moorings seems very close to shipwreck to me. I hope we will never see America in such a condition.

I am having a party on Friday the 13th if people show up — I am the honoree but not the host nor the one managing an RSVP list. I have been to far more birthday parties than the average person. Extended family and also friends for many years although not lately. So it is a part of my life which from time to time involves my own anniversary of birth.

My grandmother’s 90th birthday

I have grown poorer over the year and my number of connections bigger but I try to at least mark the occasion of a birthday party as best I can. I believe in them as it were. The future, the past and the presents are brought together in some kind of celebration.

The level of commemoration is not always the same and it is true that I do not always stay to the end of the ones I go to anymore. Such is life but they still mark a life, an occasion and remember a mother’s always heroic act of giving birth in our memories in a subtle but real way.

I suppose that this is the occasion when we reach out to a whole person and their family and do not focus on a shared holiday, on an achievement like a graduation or on a relationship based status like motherhood or fatherhood.

Friday the thirteenth is also a scary day for many on which most people in America would probably not plan a party. I suppose that birthday parties are from a certain point of view always signs of proven blessing and good fortune.

I have already discussed my birthday as it relates to turning fifty and also the fact that my cousin Billy will be ordained a deacon on the 14th of June. Those facts are at least briefly reviewed in this recent post. But the fourteenth is also the birthday of Wang Guang-rong on of my associates in China who I think about often enough. It is also true that it is always Flag Day. I do love the American flag. I have been careful in displaying it but also have displayed it in plenty of places where it was seldom seen. Those and other facts will distinguish the date for me every year.

The fifteenth is Father’s Day and I have dealt with my Fathers Day in a recent post already cited. So I will mention a few more occasions it is also Tasso Smith’s birthday. real name Carl Tasso Smith IV is a vocalist and guitarist forYoungblood Hawke which is a band developed in San Antonio, Texas which in its first few years with a record deal has appeared on all of the top four broadcast television networks, sold it themes to numerous commercial and entertainment entities and has generated a lot of buzz and attention for it crafted and somewhat artsy rock sound. Tasso is my first cousin the son of Carl Tasso Smith III who has been many things and has many skills but has long earned his keep in the family agribusiness concern which is a major producer of peas. Tasso’s mother is my father’s youngest sister Beverly Summers Smith, who goes by the name Missi Smith and under that name has produced, shown and sold many works of art. Tasso graduated from Alamo Heights High School and earned a Bachelor of Science in environmental Science at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. He lives in Los Angeles, California as of 2014 and retains ties to San Antonio, Texas. He spent quite a bit of time in Louisiana with family and on his family’s farm. His sister’s Brooke and Leah form the remainder of his birth and nurture nuclear family although he is now an uncle and has a serious relationship with Whitney Ullom. This information could be a bit off.

My birthday is also the fifth anniversary of the death of my maternal grandmother Beverlee Hollier Gremillion. I cannot do full justice to her life in this post not the reality of her absence. But I do need to organize some information about her in this blog eventually.

two of my grandparents

She preceded my grandfather in death by almost five years. But most of my life they were almost inseparable. The good times and the bad were all memorable and her home was a center for both, We were pretty close as such things go and I have countless memories of her.

Kissinoaks,the Home of my Maternal Grandparents

She was a very accomplished cook, could manage a household staff, was a good storyteller, painted and decorated and beautified in any number of media in a number of venues she owned which were seen by many. But her family was the center of her life.

It will be easy to find times on this busy day to remember Mamon during all the other things that happen that day. I surely will do so.

My grandparents have Kissinoaks blessed

I know that a good many people will remember her that day as well. It is an important part of my journey of fifty years that I journeyed with her for a good while. I am sure others feel similar things.

Moving houses has continued as a family tradition since Kissinoaks to where I am typing this.

So when the weekend ends I will get back to my life and routine I hope although I hope it may improve. But certainly there will be plenty to fill my thoughts this weekend. I am simply facing the reckoning of half a century and not feeling very good about the future, But beyond my life there are many other events going on around and near me.

The world always goes on around family events and sometimes they get a bit of notice.

This post is about the wake, funeral and burial video of my grandmother who died on March 27, 2012. It is part of her memorial in this blog.

I have been slacking off on posting for many reasons since this was first posted and videos are harder to find as the software finds me less active but the one you want isGammie’s Paschal Passing and should be at the link below. as well as through the title. You can also drag the link below into your browser.

I did not watch President Obama’s State of the Union address live. My mother and I went out early and stopped at my countryside post office to check my PO box. Then we arrived at Richard’s Crawfish Patio and ate boiled crawfish. Next we went to Lafayette’s South Regional Library and returned some things and checked out others. After that we went to The Grand 16 and watched Country Strong. After that awe stopped at a convenience store and bought a few of the most urgently needed things for the house. We drove back to where we live. I put things away and did a brief chore or two and flipped on C-SPAN and caught the second half of the speech and the Republican response. Then I stayed up late enough to catch the first half on a simulcast by CNN and FOX.

It seemed clear to me that President Obama is a very dangerous man for us to have as President of the United States, It seemed clear to me that our country is in terrible trouble. It seemed clear to me that things are just plain terrible in much of our political system, However, I will reserve detailed analysis and commentary for a later post. I am more concerned today about slowly losing my battle to preserve the health and function of my feet than I am concerned about the issues of the State of the Union Address. Perhaps in the next day or so I will get the energy together to focus on the SOTU in a blog post more specifically.

I thank God for all of the good things that happened to me and those I care most about this year. One good thing is that Sarah my sister and her husband Kevin who married on January 2,2009 will be celebrating their second wedding anniversary. It is a blessing to see love making its way trhough this difficult world. Another blessing is that 2010 began with the New Orleans Saints preparing to win the Super Bowl and they are back in the playoffs. Also this year I got to see some great drama, sports and other activities in which my younger (and sometimes older) relatives were involved in making great things happen. But it was the year we lost my uncle William Charles Summers as well as some other people less near and dear but part of my life.

In terms of me personally looking back I would probably say that overall it was a bad year. But I would probably say that about almost every year. That assessment has nothing to do with the few facts and events mentioned about the year in this note.

Compared to the end of 2008 this year the midterm elections did seem to offer some check to the hubris of President Barack Hussein Obama. I am commenting on The Norton View at the moment but not the Lords of the Blog. I am leaving this year on this blog with a note from the tranistional days of 2008-2009. It first appeared in my Facebook profile notes. Here it is:

Starting and Continuing Journeys: Reflections on a New Year

The year 2009 already has begun. That is the sort of gripping headline that has those of you who do read these notes sticking around. Or perhaps it is a rather predictable and ordinary statement about the change of a calendar year which we all could have predicted quite easily. The change of the year is one of those milestones that frequently are observed with some fervor by the people whose lives have aimed at a certain rhythym. There have been many societies where the balance provided by the holidays of each year was stronger than it is now in the same lands occupied by those former societies.

I just attended one of the more beautiful weddings and receptions which I have ever seen although it was a rural affair and not availed of some urban splendors. For the groom it was a first marriage of a musician, sailor, traveler and a young man with a bit of the swagger and reputation of a man who cut quite a figure as the free bachelor being joined to the joys and burdens of a lovely women with three beautiful children. My sister Sarah just got married to Kevin Joseph Granger. Her three beautiful children from her first marriage were included in a beautiful way in that event. Even the wedding itself which is a begining is also the end of a journey of engagement made possible by a journey of annulment to make her firts marriage a putative rather than bing Catholic marriage. That in utrn followed a heartbreaking journey of separation and divorce. That event was more in doubt than the calendar change was in most of our minds. The wedding was truly beautiful. Sarah and Kevin asked me to read and I was both honored and delighted to do so, it was a small but useful part of the whole ritual. Later we all had a reception in which music candlelight, christmas lights and fog combined for a really extraordinary ambience. Weddings are apropriately lavish affairs that allow people to engage in the right ways in the start of a journey through life together.

The video recording by my brother John Paul, the extensive preparation by my mother Genie and the relatively minor contribution by me which wore me out nearly because it was on top of and in the midst of Christmas was all part of a really wonderful whole that brought us closer together in a special way. There is in a wedding a networking with family and extended kindred in a way that is both stately and efficient. There is the test of handling a large project together. There is the right kind of redistribution of wealth in which those who can give only a small gift still get a good meal and a sense of bvelonging after paying what they can and those who have ample means can help a couple make a start while still getting something in return for their generosity. Without getting to the very important part about being joined in the eyes of God weddings already play many roles that make them very worthwhile if demanding launchsites for a life’s journey. Sarah and Kevin’s wedding launched a very exciting and impressive adventure that is of value to society as a whole.

I am writing the first draft at least of this sentence on January 6 the traditional date for celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany. This feast comemorates the visit to the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph by the three Magi who had come from the East. These Magi brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to honor the newborn king who by then would almost certainly have been out of the manger but who was born there. Because Christmas is celbrated every year and because of that the Epiphany is kept near Christmas. The feast does not indicate anyone who scheduled it believing that the three kings of the East arrived only a dozen or so days after the Birth of Jesus. The Holy Family already had several reasons to want to re=establish their ties to their ancestral House of David and its ancient site so that they might have stayed there even as long as a year. The star if it appeared at his birth and waqs researche by the Magi may have become more meaningful as news arrived of various royal births and perhaps among the goodly number some rumors of an already growing Jesus story. Then they visited the royal palace of Herod in Jerusalem. His scribes agreed that the Messiah should be born in the City of David. They made their report to the King who met with his guests who then journeyed from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Their coming would help provide means and incentive for the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt while they themselves returned home by a different route. For the wedding of Sarah and Kevin we had three visitors from the East which is West of Israel. Two Spanish priests and a seminarian came to us, the Priests concelebrated with the wedding mass and they have stayed and celebrated the Epiphany as well. One of them was baptized on the feast of the Epiphany many years ago. All are young and from a country which really celebrates the Feast of the Epiphany. It has been special to have them here at this time.

The journeys on my mind today are numerous. One way in which journeys enter into this season for me is through the journeys of Marco Polo. Because I have traveled a great deal and because for much of my life I wanted to go to China and then did go and now remember going to China — Marco Polo has interested me. In his of tale of his journeys he tells of meeting worshiping communities, monuments and sites of ancillary wonders that were related to the Magi who visited the Christ child and which still survived autonomously into his own day. Marco Polo’s book has never been very respectable. Each generation has found something about it incredible and dismissed most of it. Usually those points of contention have been shown to be reliably and fairly accurately reported from Marco Polo’s point of view. Journeying always can bring people face to face with one thing or another that is almost incomprehensible to those who stayed behind. Probably the real magi who really did visit the real Jesus left behind a legacy which he observed transformed by retelling and ritual into a lovely heritage of magic and belief. Anyone who reads me knows that my respect for the modern kind of cynical skeptic has benn almost destroyed entirely by a 1000 experiences of their ridculous ignorance and fanaticism.

These wise kings are also some how a reminder that a kingis both royal and a monarch but the tow qualities are separate. Not all monarchs are royal and not all royals are monarchs. This is part of what Christians should undestand because of the importance of Jeus’s identity as king. So it is perhaps a final Christmas reflection from me in these notes.

When one thingks of the message to the shepherds recalled on Christmas one thinks of Peace on Earth to Men of Goodwill. Christianity is largely an antimagical religion that celebrates the three Wizard Kings and their goodwill to their central figure. Though, Marco Polo found the remenants of the Magi’s tradition often at war with Islam it was not a coherent tradtion in the way Catholicism is. Quite possibly these Magi left some seeds to germinate in Arabia which when fused with Judaism and Christianity and the tradtions of his particular tribe helped to create both the historic Mohammed and the historic early Islam. Later more official sort of people might have de-emphasized their influence since they are not entirely reputable from and Islamic point of view. Possibly even the genes of some of these kings and their ilk have meandered around into the blood of such men as King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia whether known to them or not. This journey of mystery and subterfuge might be both historical and historically significant in many ways that we will not ever know now. The long struggle of Christians and Moslems in the most important regions has probably erased any trails that could be profitably followed. I would mostly blame Islamic forces but think that Moslems might see things differently.

At the end of 2009 I reconnected with a woman I had known slightly as a girl and who has journeyed so much since that she is one of my very few peers in the area of travel. We chatted had coffee and I wrote her some verse and it seems our journey has ended there. But it was an inner journey for me nonetheless. For a very short time I journeyed back into the sense of happiness one has when it seems possible that life’s journey will be less bleak and horrible becuase one has the promise of sweet and good company. At the same time I was also in touch with the feminine inspiration I have not forgotten in China and yet find so very distant in time and space now. The woman I encountered again was in no way a 15 year old nearly mad Juliet nor am I in any way Romeo. Yet, whatever it was I was sad to see the light go out and leave me again in the dark in that particular way.She is on this List but she has never posted anything disclosing our flirtation on my page and so I will not expose her here. Life is full of the struggles of inner journeys as well.

I have also made a kind of journey to the end of my rope. This has been most specifially related to the Obama election in the larger context of our times. I may stay here till I die but I am pretty sure that I cannot keep living my life hoping for an American future for myself and my descendants. Fortunately, given the other factors, I have no descendants in this or any other country. But I have reached a point of not struggling to care. This has been an unsuitable place for me to live and now it is becoming an impossible one instead. I may simply whittle away my remaining years or I may move but I am beyond investing my deepest self here. That is a sad and unfortuante place to have arrived but it is where I am.

Through the latter part of 2008 and into 2009 I also had an unexpectedly prolonged dialog with Lord Philip Norton of Louth mostly on the “Lords of the Blog” section of the British Parliament website — www.parliament.uk –which has helped me make a sort of journey to dealing with some parts of both my Anglo and Acadian heritage. Mostly I have posted comments on his blogbut these are vetted and he has responded more than once. On one occasion I begged out of responding to a more technical question he posed for various reasons. So it has been a dialog facilitated by the instant journeying of the internet. A journey of some value.

Also in a year when NASA has been seen as a good target for budget cuts (and it may be) I have posted on the Planetary Society’s Facebook Group page a discussion post outlining how I would see Space exploration, travel and colonization in the human future. I believe that NASA has an important role to play in the journey of human civilzation becoming what it should become, more generally that we most journey to the moon and mars in the biggest and most responsible ways we can and as productively as we can while exploring space. We also have to journey into new ways of doing things that are more cost effective.

While I believe in inner spiritual and intellectual journeys and I believe in relational journeys these are fed and not mainly in competition against journeys through space and place. In an era in which any two places on Earth can communicate in less than a second and one can travel between almost any two points on the earth’s surface within a few days it is vital that humanity preserve its sense of adventure by traveling beyond the Earth. Just as the weding of my sister had guests she alone or she and Kevin had been with in Spain and other countries to make her journey across kneeler and cake to KEVIN more full so we can hope for outer space to really enrich our lives on Earth.

In this year may all of our journeys be more prosperous and happier than we expect. May they also bring us to good places.

·

Frank Wynerth Summers III HRH Louis de Bourbon has left my friends list of his own volition just before this comment was posted.

January 29, 2009 at 12:05am ·

Frank Wynerth Summers III I have just been notified that the HRH’s account was terminated. Repulican persecution is never a surprise nor do I say it is not understandable but since I cannot personally be sure right now and may not post more I will not speculate regarding any of this.

January 29, 2009 at 12:30am

END OF FACEBOOK NOTE

I am entirely engaged in the process of ending this year and starting the next. I am not living in the near past. However, I am wishing you and yours a Happy New Year! Just as I would have wished you on that or any other day. My family gathered today for a traditional New Year’s Eve meal of cabbage, ham and blackeyed peas. This was followed by traditional fireworks in the back of the lawn surrounding the house. Those are going on as I finish this first edit.

My mother Genie Gremillion Summers wrote a Christmas play which has been peformed quite a few times before some sizable audiences in several countries as well as in more hurried and small scale fashion. My sister Sarah Summers Granger (formerly Sarah Summers Spiehler) has adapted and directed the play to be performed by a homeschool troupe. She has a long history with drama including directing a homeschool troupe in the performance of “Shakespeare to Go” last year. Her children my nieces and nephew Alyse Elizabeth Spiehler, ANika Spiehler and Soren Spiehler have all acted before and will all be in the cast of this production. My father, brother Simon and I will be joining others from here near Abbeville to travel to New Orleans to see this play God is With Us. I am looking forward to this and it is certainly a very apt and real part of my Christma.

This post is like a nesting box set or those Russian dolls that include smaller dolls inside themselves in a series that can be revealed as they are split open. My own Thanksgiving observance has begun with spending a lot of time helping others who are really preparing the Feast, talking about the holiday and the football games as well as seeing who will and will not be around our massive table (many tables actually). John Paul Papurzynski is wedding Sheila Agresta and they are involving my family and some of the sites of the FMC bases in this project and celebration. The New Orleans Saints will be playing a big game with the Dallas Cowboys on the day and it comes at a crucial time of year as well in the football season. There are lots of other things and dearly cared for people on my mind as well. Some I will see at Dinner some on the Day but not at Dinner and some not on the Day at all.

I may blog again tomorrow or the next day but I reproducing my main Thanksgiving Day blog post here as well. This is very great and deep tradition now going back alomost four years on the internet in one form or another…

2009 blog post here:

I hope that all reading this will have the kind and level of Thanksgiving Day which seems appropriate and right for them. Not all of ye few, ye proud, ye brave– ye readers are Americans. I am reprinting a Facebook Note from last year on the Thanksgiving Holiday here. I hope you enjoy it as part of your season.

This morning in the very early hours I sent out 40 e-cards to comemorate the holiday and Monday night I had Sarah, Alyse, Anika, Soren and my nephew Eli who is my sister Mary’s son over for a large dinner where we returned thanks and were in fellowship. Tomorrow I am scheduled to be with my Dad’s mother and his siblings and their families. So this is a pretty full Thanksgiving compared to last year but the parts of the note which are not about my specific plans are largely accurate. So here is the note:

This is kind of a Thanksgiving note but it is not really heartwarming or cheerful. I also hope it is readable on occasions after Thanksgiving. Perhaps if you are pretty sure you will not have a great Thanksgiving it would not be a bad note to read. If you are on the borderline call an old friend, watch football, offer to help someone clean up the dishes or whatever BUT don’t read this note. America has always had some serious problems and for whatever reason those problems have always weighed upon me. They are not the only things weighing on me andnever have been. However, this year is a year in which those problems weigh very heavily. I see the election of Barack Obama as kind of an anti-Thanksgiving event.

Thanksgiving comes from the most optimistic and positive part of America and its best historic moments. There have bee a lot of good times and moments of glory in America and in a real way Thanksgiving ties us to all of those times. “The pilgrims prepare a feast and invite those who lived in America before them to join the feast. These Aboriginal Americans called Indians join them and there is a period of peace and collaboration.” That’s the basic story. There were days of Thanksgiving, of Repentance, of Intercession and other such spiritual exercises in the Plymouth Brethren community. Unlike the Anglicans of James Town or my own Acadian forebears (who were mostly Catholic) these feasts were not scheduled to fall on holidays that were the same each year and regular ritual was avoided. If the Acadians had been the dominant culture on the continent in every way there might be a Jour des Bonnes Temps. There was in Acadie a society of recognized knights and non-aristocrats called “Le Orde des Bonnes Temps”. This Order of Good times would fund a priest or missionary to have a mass or service when they came through and would support community celebration of holidays. They did invite MiqMacs to their feasts on occasion. However, even with some charitable and religious functions of their own the order had a principal purpose. That was to be a kind of buying cooperative to ensure that the best possible meats and wines and pastries would always be for sale in the young colony. They did that by throwing several feasts each year that were as extravagant as they could make them. These Catholics, like the Spanish Catholics who celebrated the first Texas Thanksgiving in 1521, did have Thanksgiving Days on occasion. Christians of all communions did this to recognize occasions when something good happened especially in the dangerous new colonies of America.

The Order Of Good Times has an interesting and not unimportant story. Theirs is a better episode than many others in our continent’s history but certainly not better as a foundation than the one the Plymouth Brethren gave us. However, since this sect avoided holidays in the traditional sense our government had to revive the custom and the practice somewhat artificially later in our history. But it is still the child of Plymouth. Some silly modern scholars have called the 1621 holiday attended by Squanto and dozens of other Indians secular compared to a religious Calvinist feast on 1623 that was whites only. That is absurd, the two feasts are simply unrelated occasions. Both thanked God but one did it in an inclusive way and the other was the same people acting in the more narrow inside baseball way that they acted when assembled as a Christian sect. By the way this 1621 Feast is the only instance where Native Americans is a good term for Indigenous or Aboriginal Americans in common speech. Native means born there and most pilgrims were not while all Indians were in this instance.

Thanksgiving is a very American holiday and a holiday related to many personal and family memories and associations. I am able to remember a few Thanksgiving Days when I barely observed the day. However, I have never been in the United States on those days. I have also not at all aware that I ever did less to make a day of it. Three years I won a turkey for Thanksgiving and one year I won two turkeys.This year I did not enter any contests. But I think that there is a sort of perfect storm of long and short-term trends which have taken almost all the energy I had for Thanksgiving. NONETHELESS, I WISH ANYONE READING THIS EARLY OR LATE A VERY HAPPY THANKSGIVING.

It has taken me a while to get this note out. This will be the longest period of time between two notes since I got on to Facebook. That is largely because of personal concerns and post-election fatigue and depression. In this note have decided to step back from my philosophizing and conjecturing about the country and civilization and to discuss my own life. It is an odd time to do so but there it goes. I do odd things…

The stuff about the country in this note has to do either with what day it is or with how the country affects me directly. So I am thinking about another of the many fathers of the Thanksgiving Holiday. To some degree it was proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln after the extremely bloody Battle of Gettysburg. Even if one believes that Gettysburg was a great and important moment of good (my own feelings are ambiguous but I am more of a Confederate sympathizer than a Lincoln fan — that much is sure) this was the darkest pattern to help make the Thanksgiving tradition. Even if you just count Yankee dead it was a bloodbath which would not have rated such a holiday under any other President we have had up to now. I don’t know about the new alleged Illinois man.

The United States before the Civil War always commanded the plural form of verbs. These days however I write that the US has been in crisis rather than that the US have been in crisis much of my life.
We are not entirely lost but we are not entirely saved either. What we have got going is a suicidal narrative and process. Fortunately, however, this is still competing with a number of productive and life-giving narratives and processes. My own life has been lived out in the context of the tensions and conflicts of this country at this time. Many Europeans and a handful of Northeast Asians like to think that there has never been much of a life of Thought in the United States of America. Many Americans agree with them. However, that is not true. There are different forms of intellectual life and America excelled in a few of them. What America has offered far more often than Europeans like to admit is a life in which especially Greek, Jewish and Roman thought was vitally connected to intervening thinkers and the life of the day. We have however an America where almost nobody thinks reading Greek, Latin or Hebrew should be a requisite for even a doctoral degree. In fact not even in a doctoral degree related to the humanities is such a skill normally required. Many times in the past any American intellectual aspired to at least a faltering mastery of one or more of these tongues. Our newly elected President was Editor of Harvard Law Review. However, what real connection did he have to the grand body of knowledge which alone justifies having anything like Harvard.

The Thanksgiving we remember is the one at Plymouth but its history as a national holiday has more to do with the bloodiest killing of Americans we have ever seen. The battle of Gettysburg saw the flower of Northern and Southern young men die in agony. However, the Union under Lincoln set up a Thanksgiving day to celebrate victory in this fratricide and the nearly inevitable loss of the Confederate cause. That is only on of several days of Thanksgiving however, even Washington had at least one. However it is Plymouth’s that we really honor. If Colin Powell, Jessie Jackson Jr. or Clarence Thomas had been elected as our first Black president they would have been in tune with the part of America that does not just lie down in surrender before the endless waves of new blood and people. Instead of this story of struggle and people-building in the great sweep of American history culminating in the highest prize we have another “only in America story” that shows how weak we have always been in America.
We are also strong but not having a common religion, recognition of the exceptional in our politics or the constant success of newcomers does not make us strong. Rather those are actually part of the cost of being who we are. It is a cost worth paying when the Plymouth Thanksgiving is being lived out. When old and new come together and God is honored in a kind of secular way and there is both hard work and excitement.
If literally anyone can become President then I am afraid that we really don’t have a country. For me that moment arrived with Barack Obama. l think I had almost reached the end of my ability to stand where this country has been for so long but this is total insanity in my view. Foreign rulers or near foreigners in other countries can be healthy. If they have deeply established religious institutions, aristocracies and nativist privileges then a foreign dynasty or lazy and benevolent occupation can be energizing. Usually it is a bad thing but often enough it is a good thing. America is not that kind of country, it has always been a minimalist official society. Now we are way below the minimum. For me the end has come, it just hasn’t set in yet. Barack’s background cuts out the tiny connective tissue of a country with too little connective tissue.

When I think of America today and of my life in it I think that it has been a slow and inevitable process that so many American streams of real thinking have dried up entirely. I am entirely sincere in saying the following: Feminism has both produced some of the worst thinking in the country and has had an enormously healthy effect in clarifying ideas, enlivening intellectual communities, opening debate and integrating ideas into life. That mix of good and bad is rather common among booming intellectual movements. Feminism certainly formed an important part of my intellectual journey and landscape.

There have been times when I was resentful of and resistant to feminism. However, there are also times when I have been involved in supporting feminist causes. I feel that the individualist — statist tension of much of modern feminism is ver typical of the recent United States of America. However, while I dislike that very much in American feminism I actually think it is less pronounced than in more male dominated discourses of American thought. Having groups of distant relatives, family and guests gathering in different religions on a Day set aside to thank God is also an antidote to the poison of seeing only individuals and governments. American women still carry most of the load of making Thanksgiving work.
I was married to a feminist. However, like most feminists (and this more true than of many male dominated movements) she was inconsistent. Women tend to drop ideas that are not working. They tend to compromise and find circuitous routes around conflicts when they don’t think they can win. My ex-wife was like many other women in that regard. In recent years I seem to live out the lyrics of the Lenny Kravitz(sp?) song “American Woman” However, I don’t feel that there are many reasons related to feminism that explain this isolation.

My isolation seems to be related to many things both about me and my society. I just joined Politico. Com, it has been interesting and people dialog with me about my comments. In setting up my profile there I had chosen to keep my personal information only for friends and to make my blog public. So far ( I have only been on two days or so as I write this) I had scores of people who visit my profile and did not issue friends requests or view my blog. Therefore, these visitors basically just looked at my screen name and the title of the blog entries. Somehow this ability to get lots of people interested enough to make one click but universally sure that two clicks would be too many must mean something big. How exactly does one do that? As I write this I have tried to get my personal information in a bit better order and have decided to open up my personal info to the public. I will see how that works out.

There have been very few times in my life when I was sustainably happy for more than a few days. There have been few periods when I did not generally avoid rather than seek out the company of most people I could associate with in my life. I think that trends are still moving in that direction for me. However, on short-term occasions like Thanksgiving Day I have had many happy times. When my love life was really good I was usually very happy for a while but those times were not that frequent. When I won something honorable with a big payoff I was often happy. There have also been sometimes when I experienced religious consolation that made me happy. There were also other times but they did not add up to very large percentages of my life. I am the kind of person who will always care about the political and social order.

I still live to make a future and as though I may live another forty years or more. However, it seems to me that we are really moving past the edge of any worldview that doesn’t approach what I would call hellishness. There is little else that I can say except that I am glad to be alone most or all of this Thanksgiving Day. In my own way I have always loved America very much but I think a lot of that love is dying. Dying in me and I feel no shame in saying that publicly. So far me this year a sad and quiet Thanksgiving Day seems about right.

End of Facebook Note–

I am enjoying a happier frame of mind (not much) than last year and do have many things on my mind to be thankful for in my life. I am heading into townto visit some people in a Thanksgiving way and we will see how that goes before tomorrow. Then hopefully a pleasant dinner with extended family.

End of 2010 blogpost

I also take this occasion to wish Amy Grant a happy 50th birthday this Thanksgiving Day. I do not think she regularly reads this blog but I am a fan and wish her the best. I hope that she and Vince Gill and family will have a really good day.

franksummers3ba.wordpress.com

This blog has over ninety pages of content at the time I registered the domain myself in 2014 after posting and working here for years, many of these pages are equivalent to many printed pages. I since then have been confronted with a higher level of premium that I have not accepted.

One of my concerns in this blog has been the overall set of issues related to intellectual honesty, transparency and also the need to provide access to sources. I will return to the issue of textual sources below but here I have another set of issues that relate to images to discuss first. The blog also has well over 650 posts, some are many pages long and some are brief. In this blog I reveal myself and my background and ideas and also deal with a variety of topical and current events. Many of the posts have images. Most of those are photographs I took or directed others to take. Some are from defunct source contracts and contacts I acquired. Some are from sources made into new art pieces by me. Starting on November 10, 2014 I have used Microsoft Office as a source of Royalty free clip art as well.

There are various features and functions by WordPress or others to help you figure out what is available here and to find what you would like to read or view. One part of the blog which you may find useful is the "Glossary of Terms Casually Defined" which can be found in the list of pages in the side column or by hovering your cursor over the "Acadian Forum Archive" in the list of words around and in the Header. Once the first glossary page drops down then hover over earlier glossary pages to unlock later ones. along with my blogroll there are many other embedded links in my post and these provide some insight into secondary sources that I have been reading, in addition any picture of me with someone or record of a formal meeting with a person will allow the reader to conjecture some sort of communication. But this is only a small approximation of scholarly notation. Assume that I pay dues when I can to the Catholic Church, every University I have attended and the Wikipedia and consult their online resources. Also assume that I consult the CIA World Factbook. Beyond that hope for the best. This is a publication on the edge by a person on the edge in many ways and does not reflect the careful annotation of a different medium.

There is an activist element in this blog which is extension of activity, prayer, evolution and planning in the rest of my own life and thought. You will find ideas such as Physical Geometry, my model constitutions and some other ideas and words I care about in the "Major Themes of this Blog" section of pages in the Header. So far some things like early chapters of my online novel are only available in posts and you can find these in the search function or the category cloud.

I am Frank Wynerth Summers III, There have been many other outlets for me to communicate with the world in the past but not so much lately. There is a cluster of links in the blogroll which you may find helpful in reaching the connections in which I live and I have a couple of pages of links and links in posts you may find over time. You can find out more about me in pages revealed when you over over my name in the header section or in those same pages as listed in the side column. Feel free to comment, only a very small percentage of people commented in the first four and a half years so I am usually able to respond to those who do in relatively timely fashion. This blog began on August 18, 2009.